About AIM and Chat in Gmail (AIM Federation)

Gmail Chat lets you chat with AIM users even if you don't have an AIM account.

Once you sign into your Gmail account you can add AIM contacts directly into Gmail just like you would add a Gmail contact. Your AIM buddies will populate your Contacts list and are searchable.

To invite them to chat simply type their screen name into your Chat roster's search field (i.e. janedoe@aol.com) and click Invite to chat. Once your contact accepts your invitation you'll be able to start chatting.

Please read if you used the previous AIM functionality:

AOL has created a tool that imports your AIM contacts into your Gmail account so that you don't have to re-add your contacts one by one. Read our blog post to learn more.

This functionality is not yet supported for Google Apps users. We appreciate your patience while we work on making this available.

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Megan is a Google Chat expert and author of this help page. Help her improve this article by leaving feedback below.